The driving force behind successful students is always the timely Guidance and counselling at the formative stage of their lives. The Para 12.9, NEP has made it clear as " Students are the prime stakeholders in the Education system, Vibrant campus life is essential for high quality teaching-learning process”, so NEP envisioned that students will be given plenty of opportunities for participation in school activities and community service projects to give them insight about real life and their latent potential. The NEP has determined that there should be robust guidance and counselling mechanisms in every school to facilitate the students and parents. This cell shall be mandated to keep in place the counselling system for handling the student’s aspirations, inclination and tendencies besides this will gauge the weakness and remedies to the student’s perversions, handle the stress and emotional adjustments, furthermore some systematized arrangements shall be made to provide requisite support to students.

Shertzer and stone in their book (Fundamentals of  Guidance and counseling) on Guidance and counselling have defined counselling as " Counselling is an interaction process which facilitates meaningful understanding of self and environment and result in the establishment and Or clarification of goals and values for future behavior ". It implies that the sole duty of Guidance and counselling cell in schools, will be to recognize, identify and foster the unique capabilities of each student by sensitizing teachers as well as parents to promote each student' s holistic development in academic and non-academic spheres. The teachers should become expert and proficient which will enable them to provide guidance and counselling service. The teachers are instrumental in building a student's professional as well as personal growth trajectories; they can facilitate student’s success and productive life by developing the right skills through guidance and counselling.

The NEP focuses on training teachers to become career counselors and mentors. The basic premise of NEP 2020 is to take education out of narrow thinking and correct it with the modern ideas of the 21st century. For this entire program of action the teacher is the Driver and students are vehicles for carrying forward the mission. The entire focus in NEP is on making children skilled according to their talent and choices hence the teacher is there to help them harness their latent ambitious demands, the choice of school, course of study and choice of vocation can be easily facilitated by teachers. The need arises that schools should have well established career counselling cells for advice and support of students. The proficient teachers can prove reliable counselors for students to help them manage their journey of learning. These can help the students’ academic experience by providing the opportunities to apply classroom learning in a pre-professional work environment. We must bear it in mind that Guidance and counselling is the process of helping individuals discover and develop their educational, vocational and psychological potentialities to achieve an optimal level of personal happiness and social usefulness.

It is pertinent to mention here that Guidance is a broad term, its service can be utilized for various other problems generally whereas the counselling refers to professional services provided to a student who is facing a problem and needs help to overcome the problem. Counselling is considered to be an integral part of guidance. B. G. Williamson emphasizes Directive counselling where counsellor plays a major role in solving the problem as counsellor, identifies, defines, diagnosis the problem and devise the remedial measures but Karl Roger proposes the non-directive counselling which is also called Client centered, here client (student) is allowed freely to express the problem, choice or other demands then student is guided by counsellor to take the decision.

Since we are at the threshold of implementation of NEP, there is a significant role of guidance and counselling at various stages of teaching learning. School Counseling cells have to make awareness among students even among parents and other teachers regarding basic components of NEP which are of paramount importance for students and school system, credit based system of learning, Academic bank of credits, vocational and skill based courses. The guidance and counselling will do wonders as already instructed by SED that school GCC should be handled by experts especially with sociology, psychology and education subject background and expertise even teachers with research experience were expected to contribute for students and school to realize the goals of NEP 2020.

The NEP sees the teachers as career counsellors in schools to make education meaningful and useful so that they can understand the individual differences and sensitivities, likings, disliking and apprehensions of learners. These counselors can fathom the emotional intelligence EQ (Emotional Quotient) which helps students to build relationships, succeed at school and at work place, and achieve their personal career goals. Counsellors show professional flexibility so that each learner has the ability, and adaptability to choose their path in life according to their talents and interests.

(Author is a Columnist and can be reached on: irasoolaleem@gmail.com)